The Umbrella Academy, Weird City and TV's Best Weird AF Shows

You may have heard that we're in the midst of Peak TV. The Golden Age of TV. A TV Renaissance.

That really just means that there's a whole lot of TV happening right now (like around 500 scripted shows), which is hard for those of us who want to watch as much of it as possible, but truly a gift for those of us who love it when TV gets really, really weird.

There are currently a whole bunch of really, really weird shows available to watch on a whole bunch of platforms, joined most recently by YouTube's Weird City and Netflix's The Umbrella Academy, both of which debuted last week.

Weird City is an anthology series from Jordan Peele about the residents of a city divided into Above the Line (where the rich live) and Below the Line (where the poor live). The first episode is a beautiful love story about Stu (Dylan O'Brien), who falls deeply in love with Burt (Ed O'Neill) while they both wear very strange shirts.

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The Umbrella Academy is a dramedy series about an adopted family of superheroes with various powers. One of them can time travel, their mother is a robot, their butler is a chimpanzee, and it's all based on a comic book created by the lead singer of My Chemical Romance. Also, Mary J. Blige plays an assassin named Cha Cha, and sometimes there are dance numbers. Not sure what else we need to tell you in order to convince you it's a show worth watching, because it really truly is.

Some reviews of both shows have said they're just weird with no purpose, but that kind of is the purpose, and if you're into that kind of thing, they're both really fun binges. They're also not alone in terms of being weird almost to the point of being unhinged, so if you're in the mood to escape reality for a few hours, we've got you covered.

Netflix

The Umbrella Academy

The superhero dramedy is based on a comic book created by the lead singer of My Chemical Romance, features Mary J. Blige as an assassin named Cha Cha, a chimpanzee as a butler, a robot for a mother, and anyone could break out into a dance number at any time. A feverish binge dream, tbh.

Netflix

Youtube

Weird City

An anthology series from Jordan Peele, it's a show about a weird city where the rich live Above the Line, where they are assigned romantic partners at birth, and the poor live Below the Line. Even just the first episode's love story between Dylan O'Brien and Ed O'Neill is worth a watch, but continue on if you want to see similar stories starring Michael Cera, Rosario Dawson, Auli'i Cravalho, Laverne Cox, Mark Hamill, Sara Gilbert, Hannah Simone, Steven Yeun, Gillian Jacobs, Malcolm Barrett, Awkwafina, and Yvette Nicole Brown

Youtube

Netflix

Russian Doll

Natasha Lyonne is Nadia, a woman who can't stop dying and reliving the same party over and over again, and that's all you need to know. Sweet birthday baaaaabyyyyy!

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TBS

Miracle Workers

What if God were Steve Buscemi and he were also a crazy person who decided he wants to blow up the earth and open a lazy river restaurant? That's the question this show attempts to answer, with help from Daniel Radcliffe/Harry Potter, who plays an eccentric angel named Craig.

TBS

FX

Atlanta

Atlanta is genius at making you think you're watching a fairly non-weird show, and then all of a sudden, something insanely weird happens, like Darius goes to buy a piano and ends up in a horror movie with an eccentric billionaire named Teddy Perkins who may or may not be played by Donald Glover. You truly never know what might happen.

FX

Netflix

Black Mirror

Black Mirror is what happens nightmares get a little too realistic. Watch if you already wanna throw your cellphone off of a very tall building.

Netflix

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FX

American Horror Story

Wanna get real scared and real confused at the same time? American Horror Story is the show for you, because they've got a season for every taste. Spooky haunted house and dead babies? Season one. Aliens and Adam Levine getting murdered? Season two. Clowns missing half their face? Season 4. Witches and Kathy Bates' severed head? Seasons three and eight. Politics and more clowns? Season seven. The deeper into each season you go, the weirder it gets.

FX

NBC

The Good Place

Life after death is utterly insane. The scarf Tahani is wearing in this pic? It's actually a giant slug from the IHOP (the Interdimensional Hole of Pancakes), and if she touches it, she'll die. This conference room is just a manipulation made to look like a conference room so the humans, the demons, and the judge have a place to sit down and discuss the important matter of whether humans are innately good or bad. Soon after this pic, Chidi accidentally falls into the IHOP, witnesses the Time Knife, and is forever changed.

Also one of the best shows on TV!

NBC

Netflix

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Anyone fancy an exorcism? How about torturing some homophobic teenage boys in a cave? Kiernan Shipka plays things pretty chill for a show about a teen girl who has to choose between becoming a full Satan-worshipping witch and remaining friends with her regular human pals. Just the set of the Spellman house is weird enough to put this show on the list.

Netflix

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Syfy

Happy

Christopher Meloni plays an ex-cop who's now an unhappy hit man having visions of an imaginary unicorn (voiced by Patton Oswalt) determined to lead him to the location of a little girl who's been kidnapped.

Syfy

Starz

American Gods

In season one of this drama about a guy who gets out of jail and roped into a massive war between the old and new gods of America, Gillian Anderson played the human embodiment of all media, and those guys don't have faces.

Starz

Chris Large/FX

Legion

We're struggling to even describe this show succinctly, but basically it's Professor Charles Xavier's mutant son David Haller (Dan Stevens) coming to terms with the evil parasitic mutant in his head. Aubrey Plaza plays an entity named Lenny and sometimes there are incredible dance sequences.

FX

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Netflix

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

It's a poignant and heartwarming tale of a woman recovering after trauma, but it's also got a talking backpack, a sexual abuse scandal involving a puppet, an apartment inside a sideways tugboat, and a plotline involving the fact that the musical Cats is just made up of Broadway dreamers who approach the stage from the audience and make a bunch of things up.

The Magicians

It's like Harry Potter, but for the former kids who now feel they're too old for Harry Potter, but still wish Harry Potter were real and had a lot more sex in it. Characters die a lot but they don't stay dead, and the first season had a sex scene between two books!

Syfy

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The CW

Riverdale

Riverdale started out as a relatively normal show about a redheaded kid who couldn't decide between music and football and also having an affair with his teacher. Three seasons in, it's an utterly bonkers trip into the town of Riverdale, where teens own speakeasys and are tormented by Gargoyle Kings and deadly roleplaying games and mysterious cults, and where rich mob bosses try to murder their daughters' boyfriends, until the boyfriends get attacked by bears. Sometimes they all take their SATs, and that's when it's weirdest of all.

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